Foam Fiddling at NASA

After the loss of Columbia, close monitoring of the ice and foam that flies off the shittle's external tank since, and the scare caused in the latest shuttle mission by a gouge in Endeavour's heat shield by foam shedding off the external tank, NASA is adopting new procedures before the next shuttle flies.

NASA will peel off a layer of foam around the brackets holding the external tank to the orbiter. The change is designed to further limit foam coming off during the launch phase and possibly damaging the orbiter.

To the extent that such tinkering with procedures this late in the shuttle program shows a weakness that has yet to be solved in the shuttle system, retiring the fleet in 2010, if not before, seems an imcreasingly good idea.